Dead boy

Feeling sentimental? Drop some Chris Bell.

Some links'n'shizzle.

1. Paul Pope draws the cover to a trade paperback of some comic I haven't read.

2. Victor Santos links to a 3-page preview of FILTHY RICH. Easy to discern a heavy Munoz-y look to these pages.

3. More on REPO CHICK, the sequel to REPO MAN.  I've always got time for Alex Cox.

Meme You Later.

Dunno if I have the heart to tell Joe Bloke I've been tagged with this meme before. Here I go again, but because I've done this once already, I won't be tagging anyone else.

"The Rules
1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Write six random things about yourself.
4) Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5) Let each person know theyve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up." (that's what their TSS feed is for, surely?)

1. I'm on Twitter. Did you know that? Don't think I ever linked to it here before.
2. I bought a house just over a week ago. I reckon the market in my home town has hit rock bottom, so why not now?
3. I've woken up every night since I bought the house, between 3 and 4 a.m., paralyzed with fear. Argh! I'm a responsibilty-ophobe!
4. I'm a fucking great cook. And a wine snob. And am quickly becoming a beer snob since being dragged to a few real ale festivals over the last couple of years.
5. To this end, I've resolved to turn one of my house-warming parties into a beer-tasting session. We'll do a live-blog of it via the medium of drunken ranting, goofy photography and iPhones. You're all invited. More notification nearer the event. And if you want your beer featured and a free plug, get in touch.
6. My favourite track on LED ZEPPELIN 4 is When The Levee Breaks.


Eh, fuck it. I'm off for a beer.

Been Caught Soliciting: more Marvel, June 2009

I look at these and imagine a better, fairer world where Karl Kerschl draws all of Marvel's top-selling funny animal comics.

 

  

And though Joe Casey's work for Marvel is hit-or-miss compared to the sure-fired nature of his creator owned stuff, I'll give this a shot: it's drawn by Nathan Fox, for starters (the man I call the Rich Buckler to Paul Pope's Jack Kirby). Also, it's called ZODIAC, and at least three of my favourite Marvel comics featured different iterations of that character (clues: Steranko, Giffen, Chaykin).

Yeah, I was always going to run this...

Filthy Rich.

Something that has caught my imagination in the new DC solicits is this: a new original graphic novel by Brian Azzarello, part of the initial launch of the new imprint "Vertigo Crime". It's called FILTHY RICH and here's the blurb - "Richard Junk Junkin has always lived on the wrong side of trouble. A former pro football star whose career was cut short by injury (and a nasty gambling problem), Junk now spends his time dreaming of what might have been, selling cars in Jersey and lusting after the bosss unbelievably spoiled, unbelievably sexy and unbelievably rich daughter, Victoria. So when the boss asks him to be Victorias personal bodyguard while she tears up the New York City club scene, Junk leaps at the chance. But before long, hes finds that Victoria wants a lapdog and not a chaperone, someone whos going to do all of her dirty workall of itsomeone who wants to get filthy rich"

Sounds like just what you'd want from The Azz, and the artist is really good, too: Victor Santos. To put a horribly reductive series of limits on him, he's got that whole post-Timm thing going on, but flicking through his blog and his website, he's capable of all sorts of styles and genres. Check those links out. Looking forward to seeing what he does with this book.

Been Caught Soliciting: DC and Marvel, June 2009

Another fine Dave Johnson cover for one of Marvel's PUNISHER comics. This one reminds me of some old pulpy '70s paperback.

And a Dustin Nguyen cover for some BATMAN comic. There's a quality to the paint's wash, and something about the width of the head, and even the composition, that really reminds me of Sean Phillips. This is, of course, a good thing.

More Ben Caldwell

And Ben writes again to point out he's posting even more prep work for his Wonder Woman story over at his blog, Purge Theory.

Black Widow casting ramble.

I thought the casting of Scarlett Johansson as The Black Widow in IRON MAN 2/THE AVENGERS was a bit shit. A bit obvious. Surely the Widow should be a tall, slim, fashionista looking character? Johansson - great rack, but surely more the hot but quirky girl-next-door type? More of a Gwen Stacey than a Natasha Romanov? My affection for the two Marvel Knights Richard K Morgan/Bill Sienkiewicz/Sean Phillips mini-series meant I viewed the character as a composite of Jennifer Garner from ALIAS (a dream casting ruined, of course, by another couple of Marvel movies, from a crappier time and place), and Sophie Marceau (another actress who has played an "Elektra", in THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH). And Sienkiewicz has himself never topped ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN. Basically, via this ramble, I think I see the Widow as, done right, the legit Marvel Elektra. Ah, clarity.

Anyway, where the hell is this going? Och aye: the latest French Vogue cover reveals maybe it wasn't such awful casting after all.

Wednesday Comics

As soon as I heard the first rumours about DC's WEDNESDAY COMICS, I thought, hey, that's got to be Mark Chiarello editing that.  It just had that stamp, that cross of maverick thinking, extremely good taste and the faint whiff of classicism.  And now the story is going overground (see here and especially here), confirming my first thought. Great - this is the first in DC's cycle of experiments with the weekly format that I'm actually interested in. More of that European love of anthology formats, I suppose.

Anyway, not amongst all the big names dropped in the first wave of publicity for the weekly is friend-of-this-blog Ben Caldwell.  He's working on a Wonder Woman story for it, and has sent along these two little teasers for the project.  Great to see Ben getting such a high profile gig: he's a great stylist, and here's hoping this breaks him into the big leagues.  And that colour guide gives us a glimpse at the rather glorious format DC are using for the project.  Big comics = the future.

Old crystal bollocks.

From the latest interview with Grant Morrison up at CBR:

Check back with CBR News on Friday for a new interview with Grant Morrison, where he discusses Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, and some other projects hes currently writing for DC Comics including one book about the Multiverse and a second in the vein of Watchmen featuring the heroes of Earth-Four, who are all former Charlton Comics characters.

Man, I predicted just such a comic years ago. The old Kardwell Krystal Ball strikes again.

Highbrow.

The best thing about WATCHMEN? The trailer for CRANK 2.

Homeboy News II

Interview with John McCrea, about his new THE BOYS spin-off, HEROGASM. The art samples look great, like John's being influenced more than ever by Steve Dillon and Charlie Adlard.

Hurm.

Hey. That previous Weston commission was for Mam Tor's John Bamber, and a quick perusal of his art collection reveals this maximum weirdness: Dave Gibbons draws cowboy Rorschach. Bonkers, daddio.

Stuff of note.

Spent far too much time today buying, consuming and discussing this stuff:


And Duncan Fegredo sends this along, mainly to stop me whining about the Hellboy hiatus:

And secret agent man/professional Dr Strange lookee-likey James Sime sneaks us a preview of some Darwyn Cooke pages for his adaptation of THE HUNTER. Cor blimey!

Also: Chris Weston is back! This is his "rough" for a Wild West Captain Britain commission. His rough is anyone else's finished art, the tinker.

St. Patrick versus Jörmungandr.

St. Patrick's Day post! Still sober! Woohoo! (gimme time - the sun hasn't reached the yard arm yet)

Anyway: THOR casting news over at Slash. So far, nothing to complain about. With her wide face and pointy chin, Natalie Portman actually looks like she was drawn into life by Olivier Coipel anyway.  Starting to think about the Thor movie to the same level I contemplate the prospect of an Edgar Wright Ant-Man movie.  Northern Ireland is a small place, and Kenneth Branagh is, indeed, the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend.  Which is why some of my mates still jokingly refer to Emma Thompson as "Auntie Em".  Maybe I should send him my notes, get that EP job I so richly deserve.

Monthly dose of Mignola.

 

Frogalicious.

A grown man in his back yard in Brazil playing with toys.

'Nuff said.

Something else I can't find on Blip yet.

Had a hankerin' to hear that: Prince at his most conventional, dumb-assed-guitar-heroic. But a hilarious lyric, all the same.

Brendan McCarthy on MAD MAX IV and WATCHMEN.

When I read, over at io9, that George Miller might be thinking of finally starting work on MAD MAX IV, but as a 3D animated film, I had to ask Brendan McCarthy for his perspective. "Mad Max 4 Fury Road as a possible animated cgi feature, was mooted many years ago, when Mel Gibson was involved and I was still working on the movie. I think it could be good; think of the opening first third of WAll-E's blighted urban landscape. But the FURY ROAD screenplay I co-wrote with George Miller would need to be revised to take advantage of the different medium of cgi mo-cap animation. Maybe it will go in a totally new direction. I haven't had anything to do with any of this for over 5 years, so things may well have changed quite a lot. Either way, I'll be in the line to see it in 3D!" So that's from the horse's mouth: McCarthy is not currently closely involved with this (still delicious sounding) movie. Though I hope when Miller does start working on it, that the final product bears plenty of Brendan's influence, visually or otherwise.

While I was bending his ear, and remembering how funny he's been on the subject of Dr. Manhattan in the past, ("My initial pitch was for a humorous story featuring Dr. Manhattan's massive blue penis and balls from The Watchmen... I liked that when he became a giant, his privates also grew enormously huge. I could imagine being inside a tall apartment block and being astonished as a giant blue monster sausage swayed by outside the window... Of course I wondered if it would now be OK to view The Martian Manhunter's green J'onn Thomas, for example... But this was a case of only highbrow 'arthouse' nudity being allowed ("Glenda Jackson's tits syndrome") and it was rejected straight away") I asked Brendan if he'd seen WATCHMEN yet: "For me, Watchmen didn't really work. The film was too self-consciously reverential and should have been 'based on' The Watchmen comics, and taken many more liberties. It really is an example of the comic book being better than the film. So Dave and Alan's original is still the definitive version and likely to remain so. I think V For Vendetta remains the best attempt at his work so far."

That's a few people I've heard now praising the V movie in the last few days. Must watch it. My personal attachment to V FOR VENDETTA (stronger than my attachment to Watchmen, thanks to my young self's love of WARRIOR) has meant that I've shied away from it to now.

Never accuse me of consistency.

Saw WATCHMEN tonight. Decent enough flick, though it lost all subtlety in an all-out grab at working as an action movie. And yeah, it reveled in all the wrong stuff from the book (which is why this is my favourite review of the movie I've seen so far). As such, it reminded me of how so many comics in the period straight after Watchmen were also influenced by the wrong parts of it, by a superficial reading of it, rather than - like - y'know - being influenced by the ambition or intelligence of the work.

Enough with the bleedin' WATCHMEN.

I think I've blogged enough about WATCHMEN lately, so I'll definitely not be linking to Padraig O'Mealoid's review of the movie (being something of a Boswell figure to Moore, he's got a unique perspective), nor to Hitler's reaction to the movie, nor to the tonally perfect, in-joke packed, Saturday morning animated version.  Sod all that, I'm done with WATCHMEN for a good long while. Honest.

Hellboy versus the tiny nudists II.

I'm a man who'll always post a Duncan Fegredo-themed news link. Cop a preview of HELLBOY: THE WILD HUNT #4.

Life and death are just things you do when you're bored.

First in an occasional series: songs I couldn't find when I looked for them while "DJing" (ferfuxache) at Blip.

The man called Uncle.

 I don't know who Jonathan Hickman is, and damned if I could be arsed looking up his Wikipedia entry, but I'm calling his "S.H.I.E.L.D. was an arm of H.Y.D.R.A." plot as a swipe of the ages-old "U.N.C.L.E. was an arm of T.H.R.U.S.H." fan-fic theory.

Paul Popes MARVEL TEAM-UP cover.

MARVEL TEAM-UP, originally uploaded by ernest.borg9.

Dammit. Wish I had a bigger versh of this to post
Ah, the bigger version. Click for maximum geek mindblowage.

The trifecta

Three WATCHMEN posts in a row! CBR is currently running a poll asking who your favourite Watchmen character is. Seriously. The running total is as obvious as you would expect it to be. What next? Who's your favourite X-Man?